Swords and Stones
by Sally-Walking
Summary: "Swords and stones may break my bones but friendship can always heal me." Or at least, one likes to think so. A chapter or two of the certainly eventful lives of arthur and his knights, from the point of view of an outsider. This story's protagonist is an OC.
1. A Grim Morning

**Author's Note; Hello :) I don't know how well this story will be recieved, but I'm putting it here for my own enjoyment and for the entertainment of anyone who is willing to read it. I hope you like it.**

**Dedication: I would like to dedicate this story to Maggie, Lucy, and Someone-Else-Who's-Name-Eludes-Me. If you are one of the three other people who know what this means, then I miss you, and our island. We may have looked like four odd little girls waving sticks around and yelling; but you know that we were fighting evil Ghost-Pirates. Sometimes we killed the bastards, too.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except for my OC. If it was in the film, then it isn't mine.**

The houses had burned well; as well as anything could burn on an island where days when you could actually see the sun were few and far between, and where everyone was usually either cold or wet, and often both at once.  
At any rate, they must have done so, because by the time that I arrived at the village, having cautiously waited a good two hours after the smoke had begun to billow up into the cloudy gray sky, all that was left was a maze of charred and blackened ruins. A few persistent fires remained here and there, refusing to go out.  
I picked up a partially burnt stick, that had no doubt been part of a rafter or something of that sort, and used it to poke through the heaps of debris that the attackers, whoever they had been, had left in their wake.  
The village was a Roman one - one of the many that had sprung up all along the wall - and one of the last in this part of the country. Most of the Roman civilians who had settled in Britain had begun to trickle back to where they had come from a few years ago, very wisely, in my opinion. So, had it been destroyed by the Picts? They were only one of the many groups of barbarians who seemed eager to reclaim the land from Rome, but perhaps the most likely to have carried out this attack.  
Not that I particularly cared who had done it, since it had been done and all I could do was continue to probe and poke around for anything valuable or edible.  
A few pieces of smashed pottery, still bearing streaks of blue and green paint. A scrap of cloth, the fabric singed to such a degree that it was impossible to tell what colour it had been originally.  
All very nice, but no food. Well, I hadn't been too hopeful on that score, but still...  
I ran the stick across my palm, watching with a sort of vague interest as it left a streak of charcoal dust on my already grubby skin.  
I blinked, wondering if having interest in seemingly mundane things was the first sign of approaching madness. I'd seen it happen to others; bottom feeders and beggars like me, and it was generally quite unpleasant. And the thing that truly worried me was, how would I know? Spending day after day wandering from place to place, begging food off travellers and selling beads and the like to whoever cared for them, with only myself for company. Really, I would have no way of knowing if I began to lose my wits.  
I shook my head slightly, to try and clear it, and snapped the stick in two, tossing it away.  
God- No, Someone help me if I started talking to myself.  
I moved on to the remains of the next house, whistling tunelessly between my teeth.  
This one had survived the fire rather better than the others, with it's four walls still standing, even if the roof had partially caved in, and the whole structure was tilting drunkenly to one side.  
Stooping low, I stepped through what must have been the doorway, scanning the rubble for anything worthy of consumption. These days, I couldn't afford to turn up my nose at anything, as long as it wasn't covered in mold, or still breathing.  
Something white, partially visible from behind a fallen beam caught my eye.  
Bread? Cloth? White fabric was quite highly prized, and a village that was inhabited by Romans was bound to contain some, somewhere.  
I leaned forward, pushing the wreckage away with all my strength. This, considering my size, wasn't very much, but I managed to expose-  
Oh.  
Oh, no.  
- a woman, her pale skin smudged and darkened with ash and her hair clotted with dried blood. She was dead. Very much so. There was no way that anyone still alive could look like that.  
She was some man's wife. Some child's mother. Could have been my mother.  
My stomach churned, and I felt the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. Forget food; I'd starve before- before...  
Out of respect for the dead, I waited until I was back in the open air before I began to retch, gagging on the contents of my own stomach. There didn't seem to be a point in staying on my feet anymore, so I crouched down, coughing a sickly yellow liquid up onto the scorched grass.  
_What kind of life is this? The world belongs to people who can look at a corpse without making themselves sick; people who are strong. Not me._  
Even as I sat there, my shoulders hunched against each racking convulsion., I realized in a disconnected fashion what an an odd sight I'd present to an observer. Skinny as a whip, and as dirty as a wild pig. I probably smelled a lot like one too, come to that. Even in a time when bathing was rather low on everyone's list of priorities, I was conspicuously grubby.  
Which, to be fair, wasn't completely my fault, since it had been a while since I'd had the chance to do more than scrape ineffectually at the grime.  
Eventually, I got myself back into a more or less upright position, wiping my mouth and chin  
with the back of my hand.  
Lovely.  
A few months earlier, I'd have spent ten minutes trying to extricate the worst of the...well, not to put too fine a point on it, the vomit from my long tangle of dark hair, but the previous week I'd hacked it off with a rusty knife, in a desperate, and quite painful attempt to avoid vermin infesting my scalp.  
The operation had done little more than make me look as if I was balancing a hedgehog on my head, and I'd tried not look at my reflection in mirrors or puddles ever since then.  
Better get a move on, before any other scavengers turn up, I thought. If push came to shove over some particularly good find, I wouldn't have much of a chance.  
I took one last look at the house that would, it seemed, be the last resting place of the roman women who had died there, and then hurriedly set off around a corner.  
I was still shaken by my find and subsequent rapid ejection of my morning meal, and that's why I wasn't very alert. Which is why I didn't hear the footsteps.  
I firmly hold that anyone could have been taken off their guard in that fashion, but I must admit that not everyone would have the mix of nonobservance and severe bad luck that it takes to practically run straight into a Pictish warrior.  
And that, as it so happened, was more or less what happened to me.  
A good two heads taller than me, and a lot broader too, and by the look of him, not the sort upon whose mercy you can easily throw yourself. He had dark hair, which rivalled my own when it came to sheer tangled-ness, and his skin was liberally daubed with woade. But I wasn't really concentrating on the details of his appearance; I was much too preoccupied with looking at the terribly efficient looking bow he was carrying in one hand.  
We stared at each other for a moment or two, apparently equally surprised to encounter a fellow human being in such an abrupt way, while I silently invoked the name of every single deity I'd ever heard of in cursing myself, the village, and the whole bloody world for getting me into this horrible nightmare.  
And the thing was, was that for all that he knew, I was just an ordinary villager who'd managed to avoid detection during the fight, and now was in quite a lot of trouble.  
And what was a Pictish warrior doing in a village his people had sacked and burned hours ago? This wasn't just an unbelievably unlucky thing to happen to me, it also seemed unutterably unfair. Of all the ways to die...  
He seemed to get over his initial surprise quite quickly, and my heart stuttered unhealthily as I watched him notch an arrow to his bow.  
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. It struck me with terrible clarity just how much having an arrow shot into you from about a foot away would hurt, as it burrowed deeper and deeper into your chest.  
I was going to die; painfully killed in a ruin of a town, because I hadn't waited an extra hour or two before sneaking in to pick up what I could. Obviously, I'd always known that I was going to die someday, but I'd assumed that at some point before then, I'd have a chance to mend my ways and go to the best place possible...afterwards.  
Think. Stay -relatively- calm.  
"Stop," I said, raising my hands, palms open to the level of my shoulders, and trying desperately to think of some sort of plan "Yn Myrddin enw," I added, switching hastily into Pictish.  
_Stop, in Merlin's name_. Well, it was worth a try, and I didn't have much to lose anymore. Merlin, it was said, had always been inclined against killing Britons, so if I could just convince the man that I wasn't a Roman, and had never even set foot in this wretched village before half an hour ago...  
"Pwy ydych chi, i siarad yn Myrddin enw?" the Pict asked, lowering his bow, but keeping the arrow notched.  
I eyed it uneasily, while trying to extract recognizable words from the rapid sentence he'd delivered in a thick accent.  
_Who are you to speak in Merlin's name_?  
Good question, my friend. That is a very, very good question.  
"Un sydd wedi siarad ag ef," I said, my voice rising an octave or two, as it generally did when I exhibited what a bad liar I was.  
_One who has spoken to him._  
Over the Pict's shoulder, I saw a stealthy movement in the deep swathe of shadows that fell between two partially destroyed houses. It was so unobtrusive that for a second I thought that my eyes had been playing tricks on me, no doubt caused by either terror or hunger, but then I heard it too. The faint rasp of a bowstring being pulled taut.  
_Duck, quick as you can!_  
The sound triggered some sort of survival instinct, because before I fully realized what I was doing, I had thrown myself away from the Pict, rolling as I hit the ground, with my hands clasped over my head.  
There was a hissing sound followed by a gasp and a horrible soft thunk. Then a muted impact, which I could only assume was made by the now very likely dead warrior's fall.  
So, someone had killed him, thereby saving my life, but the question was, was I truly safe? My rescuer might decide to put an arrow into me too; after all, why wouldn't he?  
I lay still for a moment, my face buried in an uncomfortable fashion in a pile of splintered pieces of wood, expecting any moment the sharp pain of an arrow shaft sinking into my side, and not receiving it. I felt almost annoyed by this; what was the archer playing at? It was even more disconcerting than when the Pict had been on the brink of shooting me himself.  
Well, if I was going to get shot, this time I wasn't just going to stand there gawping, like a half-wit. I probed around with my left hand, which was hopefully hidden from the archer's view, and after a few seconds, my fingers closed around a jagged piece of rock, which felt like it had once been a spearhead.  
Well, it would do the job nicely. I wasn't big enough, even at the age of fifteen, to put up much of a fight, but I had good aim and an even better arm. The thing wouldn't kill anyone, but it would hurt quite a bit to receive it in the face.  
There was a crunch of more than one pairs of footsteps - wait, how many people are there? - the loudest of which stopped about a foot from my head. Then came a voice, saying something loudly, and almost making me start out of my skin, in a language I wasn't familiar with. Or was I? A few words sounded a little like Briton, but with faintly foreign pronunciations.  
Well, it sounded like he, whoever he was, had just said 'Well done, Tristan. This one's alive.', or something like that.  
Tristan? Who by the stones and swords was Tristan?  
"Is he armed?" This voice was younger, and I could understand the words more clearly, since they were more lightly accented.  
No, I'm not. Well, not very adequately, at any rate.  
Where were these people from? They weren't Picts, but they weren't Romans either, by the sound of it.  
There was a moment of silence, and I heard someone, breathing heavily, presumably lean over me to check whether or not I was going to present a threat. I didn't dare breathe, and if I'd tried all I would have gotten was a lungful of dust and ashes.  
This time, the voice sounded almost amused, an emotion that I had all but forgotten about myself, at this point.  
"He has a rock," it said, and I heard a few laughs coming from farther away.  
Well, at least someone was able to see humour in the situation, I thought a little peevishly, now feeling oddly let down. When you are in a possibly life threatening situation, for the second time in one morning, you sort of expect everyone else concerned to treat it with the same amount of gravity.  
"Is he awake?" said a third man. He was definitely a Briton, I realized, and a quite young one at that. They all were, by the sound of it.  
There was a light pressure on my side, which I took to be from someone giving me a light kick in the ribs. It wasn't particularly violent or painful, but I let out a small gasp of pent up air, and coughed, choking on dirt that I had sucked in inadvertently.  
"Yes, he's awake."  
"Good," said the Briton, before raising his voice a little 'You can get up, boy. We mean you no harm."  
It was possibly the most comforting thing that I had heard all day; all month, in fact, even though I wasn't quite sure that I believed it. Still, I wasn't going to wait for someone to drag me bodily upright, so I pushed myself up into a sitting position, spitting out clumps of dirt. From there I managed to get to my feet, bruises no doubt caused by my rapid descent twinging painfully.  
I brushed ineffectually at my tunic, now stained and tattered beyond all hope of redemption ndt then looked up to see who exactly had saved me.  
After a moment, the stone slipped from my loose fingers and thudded to the ground


	2. For Better Or For Worse

**Author's Note: I don't know if anyone is reading this story, or ever will (the web is such a big place), but if you are, thank you.**

**And thank you to my brilliant beta-reader.**

**Disclaimer: My OC is mine. Parsifal is, more or less, mine. Both of these characters feel strongly that they are their own people, and dispute this. Everything else isn't mine. Not much more to say, is there?**

I took a deep breath, trying to slow down my heart, which was beating at a thoroughly unhealthy rate. From where I stood I counted seven men, all of them very well armed, but I knew even without looking that there was at least one other standing behind me.  
They weren't Romans; they lacked that air of regulated discipline, but that didn't make them any less intimidating . Instead, they radiated a sort of self assured efficiency; the kind that comes from having had lots of practice at what they had been trained for, and being very good at it.

The one nearest to me, who I presumed had been the one who had checked to see if I was awake, had a pair of worryingly dangerous looking swords strapped across his back, and a few images of what they could do to me rose unbidden to mind...  
And all seven of the men looked...well, not exactly like Britons, either. Their clothes and armour were, for a start, quite unlike any kind I'd seen before, and there was even something in their expressions that was...different.

However, I didn't really feel up to trying to figure out what was so odd about them, because it took me all of five seconds to realize that, for the second time in one morning, I was possibly about to be shot.  
Meant me no harm, hmm? _Right._  
I wondered, watching the archer in question, if there was any point fighting Fate. Clearly, some otherworldly force just wanted me to die, for reasons that I wasn't completely sure of. Maybe I should just resign myself to the fact that, one way or another, I was going to end up dead by the time that the sun went down.  
The archer himself, standing about six feet away, and flanked by two of his companions, was looking at me with remarkably impassiveness, apparently in no hurry to either lower his bow or release his arrow. I noted, with absurd clarity, that he had two strange marks beneath each of his eyes, which reminded me of the way that the Picts often tattooed their own skin.  
A charming and interesting observation, but I still couldn't think of a way to extricate myself from this situation.  
"Gawain, Galahad; go see if there are any more," said the Briton, and as soon as he said it, I thought; _Leader_.  
Two of the men, nodded and moved off down what was left of the village's main road, glancing back over their shoulders at the rest of us.  
"It's all right, Tristan," the Briton went on, and to my infinite relief, the arrow swung down to point at the ground. But I had a feeling that it could be swung back up again at a moment's notice. Best not to do anything that could possibly be construed as threatening, then.  
"What is your name, boy?" This came from the one with the two swords, and it took me a few moments to collect my thoughts enough to realize what he'd said.  
Well, being called 'boy' rankled a little, and not just for the _obvious_ reason. One of the two who had left - Galahad - had looked barely older than myself. Still, I was willing to put up with being called almost anything, if it meant that I was going to be allowed to walk away unharmed.

_Name. Name_. I sought desperately for the sort of name that I'd be expected to have. As you may have gathered, spur of the moment invention was not exactly one of my skills.  
"Um, my name is...Gareth," I said, at last, my voice quavering in an octave usually used to whistle for dogs. I coughed, trying again "Gareth."  
The man who had asked raised his eyebrows in a manner that made it clear that he did not believe me at all, and I heard more than a few snorts of laughter from his companions.  
"Yeah," muttered one of them; a heavy set man who looked to be the oldest of the lot "Right."  
I saw the Briton turn around slightly and shake his head at them, before looking back at me.  
"And were these your people, Gareth?" he asked, and there was something in his tone that made me feel a little bit more hopeful.  
I wondered for a moment if I should say yes, but then decided against it. I could never pass for a Roman, and it would just lead to difficult explanations.  
"No," I said, truthfully,"I have never been here, before today."  
I hoped that nobody was going to ask why I _was _there, because if they did I'd have to reel off a string of lies which would no doubt only confirm their opinion of me being either a lunatic or a thief.

I saw the Briton exchange quite expressive glances with the one who had asked my name.  
_Friends. And close ones, too it seemed._

"Where do you come from, then?" said the latter, with a little bit of frustration stealing into his voice.  
Where _did_ I come from? Nowhere, that's where. Well, to be strictly honest I did come from a village, further South named 'Tan Gwyn' which meant 'White Fire'. Well, I hadn't gone back since I was eight, but from what I remembered, it should have been called 'Gwylb', which meant 'Wet'. Never knew my father, whoever he was. Neither did my mother for that matter, but that wasn't really unusual.

_So...born a...bastard in a filthy hovel in a place that was famed for being the soggiest patch of the rainiest country in the Roman Empire. No place like home, eh?_  
But it wasn't my home; or at least it didn't feel like it. For one, there weren't many people there who would be euphoric if I went back for good. I wasn't even sure how my mother would feel, for that matter.  
We hadn't parted on...the best of terms.  
"I come from the South," I said, trying to phrase it in a way that wouldn't technically qualify as lying "But I have nothing to keep me there."  
The men went into a rapid and almost unintelligible discussion in their strange, mixed, language, but I could make out a word or two. By the sound of it, they were deciding what to do with me. One of them, who was apparently named Lancelot, was pointing out that if they wanted to get back to wherever they'd come from, before sundown, they wouldn't have time to take me back to whatever gods-forsaken village I'd sprung from.  
"Can't leave him here, though. The Woads could always return."

"Where's the nearest outpost? We could always take him there."  
"They won't want another mouth to feed at Rhufeiniaid Neuadd, Arthur. They haven't been getting enough supplies as it is."  
_Arthur... _I gulped involuntarily as something which had been tugging at my memory suddenly became clear.  
It couldn't be... But it all fit. Their armour, their voices, and the leader _was_ a Briton. I did a quick mental count of my strange rescuers.

_Eight. Ah._  
Well, I'd heard of Arthur Castus and his knights before; everyone had, no matter how low their position in life. Just three days before, I'd listened to a particularly fanciful tale by a farmer about how they'd single handedly defeated a hundred raiders.  
_When Arthur speaks you can hear him ten miles away, _he'd said,_When Arthur is angry, the earth trembles. And-_  
_And when Arthur pisses, he floods whole valleys, _someone had interrupted, a little crudely.  
People had laughed, but only nervously, and then they'd begun to hurriedly discuss crops and droughts. Arthur was quickly becoming a legendary figure, spoken of in the same admiring tones as the mythical heroes of old.  
And yet, there I was, not six feet away from him, and he looked truly unremarkable. Oh, he was a fairly handsome young man, from what I could see of him, but his appearance didn't command a particularly large amount of fear and awe.  
If I'd been asked to point out which one looked like Arthur Castus should, I'd have immediately pointed to either Tristan or Lancelot, both of whom were inspiring a lot more fear in me at the time, believe you me.  
"Glan yr Afon's not far from here," said the man who appeared to be called Bors. The name sounded harsh and rough on his tongue, and I wondered how he and his companions felt about our sometimes bewildering pronunciations "Vanora's sister lives there; she might take the boy in."  
_Vanora?_  
"I'd be more than willing to take him to her then," said one of his friends; a young man with light brown hair and the beginnings of a beard. From his tone and the snorts of laughter from the others, I surmised that the woman in question was of considerable beauty.  
"Yes, you would, wouldn't you, Parsifal?" muttered Lancelot, grinning.  
I never heard what Parsifal's reply to this was, because a sudden thought had hit me like a punch in the stomach.  
They had saved my life; all of them had. And among my mother's people, a life debt wasn't something that could be taken lightly. If someone either spared your life or saved it, you were bound by your own blood and bones to repay the debt, in one way or another.  
If you didn't, the knowledge of it would pick away at you from the inside, never letting you forget your own shame.  
And I had come from the land, and was bound by it, no matter how much I hated the idea. I had to do something for Arthur and his men in return, which, obviously would be quite impossible if I was taken to Vanora's sister, whoever she was.  
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Galahad and Gawain return, leading horses which I assumed to be the knights'. Evidently, some decision had been reached as to what was going to happen to me, and already the knights were swinging themselves up into their saddles and shoving various weapons into their scabbards.  
I racked my brains for a way out of my predicament, and, unfortunately, only one plan presented itself.  
_Ah well, what have I got to lose?_  
_Well, besides my life..._  
I took a deep breath and forced my legs to move, clambering over the wreckage that separated me from the knights and throwing myself, with a breathless prayer to whichever god or goddess might be feeling benign and merciful, directly in front of the nearest, Gawain's, horse.  
The animal danced nervously and shied away from me, causing her rider to mutter impressively expressive curses, but I did my best to ignore this, looking from startled face to startled face and trying to sort out what I should say.  
"My lords, you have saved my life," I said, speaking as quickly and loudly as I could, expecting any moment to be cut off. "And for this I swear by the blood of the land and the swords of my ancestors that I will serve you in whatever manner I may, and, should the need arise, give my life to save yours, and so repay this great debt."

It was, upon reflection, probably the most garbled oath ever sworn, and for a few moments they simply stared at me, evidently trying to decipher what I'd said.  
Lancelot was the first to react, opening his mouth to doubtless tell me something along the lines of 'Don't be a fool...', but I plunged on, looking pleadingly at Arthur.  
"Please, my lord, you are of my people too. You must understand. I don't have a choice."  
We looked at each other for who knows how long, myself not even daring to breath. At last...  
"We'll take him back with us," Arthur said, earning what felt like my eternal gratitude. "He can help Jols."  
_Yes! Yes! Thank you! I'll help this Jols, whoever he may be, with all my heart! I'll spend the rest of my life shovelling horse manure out of your stables! I'll do whatever you like!_  
I was so grateful that I could have dropped to my knees and the earth at Arthur's feet. Forget my earlier scepticism; as far as I was concerned he was the greatest leader and warrior in the whole Roman Empire.

A few of the others looked like they were considering objecting to this statement, possibly due to the fact that I must have smelled worse than a rotting corpse, but thankfully they didn't.  
"Can you ride?" asked Lancelot, with a slight sigh.  
"What?" I asked, caught temporarily off guard by this.  
"Can. You. Ride?" he repeated, now sounding distinctly exasperated.  
I shot Gawain's horse a wary look; realizing for the first time how big it looked from close quarters.  
"Um...I'm sure I could learn," I said, not at all sure that this was the case.  
"He can ride with me," said a tall man who I had heard referred to by the others as Dagonet. My annoyance at being more or less continuously referred to in third person vanished as I recognized a welcome amount of kindness in his voice "Just hold on tightly, boy," he added, urging his horse over to me.  
Wondering if I was going be called either 'him' or 'boy' for the rest of my life, but not wanting to push my luck and protest, I awkwardly heaved myself up behind him.  
Arthur and the rest of them had all mounted their horses with the smooth movements of those who had been doing it all their lives, whereas I probably looked as if I'd never even ridden a mule before.  
Which I hadn't, in fact.  
I tried not to think about what might happen if I fell off, but being trampled by all the other knights' horses would be inevitable and doubtless very messy.  
So, I was about to ride with the famed Arthur Castus and his knights. I wasn't being thr_ea_tened, or interrogated, or for that matter, dead. _Things were looking up..._


End file.
